In a Ferry, Across the River
by fbeauchamphartz
Summary: Adam is waiting on line at the dock, ready to take a pleasant ferry ride across the water. Except, he doesn't remember how he got there, or why he's there, and something about the water, and the man driving the boat - a man he knows, he just doesn't know from where - are all entirely wrong. Kurt H. Adam C.


_**A/N:** _**Written for Kurtoberfest 'Freebie Day'. Okay, I picked my own prompt for this one (seeing as it was freebie day. See if you can tell what it is). I was in the mood to write an actual, Halloween type story, so here it is. If you're wondering, I chose Adam for this because I wanted to pick a character who is genuinely good-hearted, someone who might tend to take things at face value. This is a pure, horror-esque story AU, so I apologize for anyone being OOC. Warning for angst, blood, skeleton imagery, nightmarish flashbacky stuff. Enjoy :)**

 _A flash of red. A siren. A scream._

Adam walks up to the dock, already crowded with people, dressed in what his mom would have termed their _Sunday clothes_ – suits and dresses and hats, the women with white gloves. A sort of strange way to be attired at the beach, but then again, so is he, so he's really in no position to criticize. They're all waiting for something. He's waiting for it, too, even if, for the moment, he's confused as to what _it_ actually is. But the people on the dock are staring in the same general direction, so he looks that way too, off the end of the short dock and over the water.

A small boat, only about the size of row boat in length, but much narrower, cuts swiftly across the water, the man standing at the bow pushing it along with a long, flat paddle. Adam can't see the man's face from this distance, but he's wearing a suit, too – a designer suit, if the few times Adam cracked open a copy of his mother's _Vogue_ magazine serves him correctly. Adam shakes his head. These people on the shore, waiting to go across (a little more anxious now that the boat has actually appeared) – Adam can understand their state of dress. His mother used to dress him and his sister up whenever they went out on day trips. She said that if you're going someplace special, you should dress special. Obviously these people feel the same. But the man in the boat – who would wear an Alexander McQueen suit to row a boat? That just seems…unusual, though nothing he can see is normal. It hasn't been from the moment he got there.

And…why is he here again? On the shore of what looks like a tremendous lake, or a river, with no clear view of the opposite side? And when did he get here? Last thing he remembers, he was in a car driving across the Queensboro Bridge, on his way to…

 _A flash of red. A siren. A scream._

It takes almost no time for the boat to go from halfway across the lake to a foot away from the dock. Did Adam blink? He's not quite sure. But now that he can see the man in the boat better, he's glad he came all this way from…wherever. Manhattan, he supposes. Adam has never seen such a man. Or he has once, back when he was still attending school. God, a beautiful man, with exceptional style and grace and elegance. He moved like a dancer, spoke like a prince, and his eyes – they were so blue, they were almost electric.

They filled Adam with lightning every time he looked into them.

The boat pulls up the dock and stops – just stops. It doesn't bob, it doesn't sway. It simply sits in the water. Adam hasn't been on a lot of boats in his life, not small ones like this, but he's sure that boats don't do that, don't sit like parked cars waiting to be loaded.

"Okay," the man with the electric blue eyes calls to the men and women on the dock. "Who's next?"

The crowd of people clamor to the end of the dock, frantic to be aboard, but Adam decides to hang back and wait his turn. It looks like they've been here way longer than he has. They've started sort of a panic, shoving and pushing, talking over each other, trying to fit on board the tiny boat.

"You've got to take me!" one lady says, waving an arm to get the boatman's attention. She's been crying since the boatman arrived, black streaks of mascara staining an otherwise perfectly made-up face. "I've been here forever!"

The boatman laughs. It appalls and fascinates Adam. The man's laughter at the stress of this woman is cruel, but the sound is remarkable. He can't think of any way to describe it other than it sounds like music. A familiar song - a comforting one.

"Forever?" he says. "Maybe to you. But believe me, not nearly long enough."

"Take me! Take me!" an elderly man says. "I've been here way longer than her! Longer than anyone here!"

"Yes," the boatman says, speaking to a man who looks older than God himself with a startling lack of compassion, "but you have nothing for me."

"Here," another man says, lifting up a child, "take my daughter! Please! She doesn't deserve to waste away here because of me."

"No, papa!" the little girl screams. "No! I don't want to go across without you!"

The boatman shakes his head, not acknowledging the man's request. He looks saddened by it, but it also seems to exhaust him to say no to these people. It shows, despite the sarcasm he uses to hide it. The man peers through the bodies, in some cases physically moving people aside with the flat of his oar so he can see past them, and spots Adam, patiently waiting at the back. Adam's a part of the crowd here, obviously waiting for a ride, but he's not yelling, he's not pushing. The boatman catches Adam's eye and smiles – an honest smile.

"You," the boatman calls, raising an arm and pointing to Adam. Adam looks left and right, at the people around him, hopping up and down, pleading for a ride. He points to himself and mouths a questioning _me?_ The boatman chuckles. "Yes, _you_ , handsome. Come up front."

The mob becomes outraged, their screams rising to a fever pitch, the shoving more violent until a few people fall off the dock and into the water. Adam peeks over the edge, waiting to see them bob up and climb out, but it's like they've disappeared beneath the surface, dropping out of existence, not a hair of them left. Hands from the crowd reach out to him, grabbing for him, begging him to take them with him, and Adam begins to fear he'll end up in the water as well. There's something not right with the water. Adam sees it shimmer and shift, a current causing shallow waves to ebb back and forth, but the boat, sitting on it, doesn't move.

"Enough!" the boatman yells, slamming the end of the oar into the dock, the cracking noise it makes echoing around them for miles. "If you don't let him by, not a single one of you will be seeing the inside of this boat until the next century! Do you understand?"

It sounds to Adam like an empty threat, a dramatic overreaction, but it seems to work with astounding success. The mob quiets down. They start to back away, heads bowed, retreating on to the shore, not even daring to look at Adam as he passes, as if he now possesses some kind of power here.

"Uh…thanks," Adam says when he finally reaches the boat.

"Not a problem," the boatman says, and Adam realizes he knows that voice. He has a name for it, one that floats through every heart beat and rings in his ears when he looks at this man.

"Kur…Kurt?" Adam asks, feeling foolish, but relieved. He's felt so lonely waiting on the dock for this boat to come. How long as he been there? An hour? A day? He doesn't know. The sun hasn't moved, and as far as he knows, his watch has stopped. He looks down at it to check, pulling up his sleeve.

No. His watch hasn't stopped. The face is shattered.

 _A flash of red. A siren. A scream._

He looks up at the boatman to ask him the time, but it's not him. It's not even a man. It's a pale-white specter in a black hood. A skeleton with hollow, empty eyes.

"Kurt?" the man says in a raspy, inhuman voice. "Hmm. I can be Kurt for a little while."

Adam wants to scream, like the scream in his head. But he blinks, and he's back, and stepping into the boat as if he was stepping in it from the beginning.

"This is a lovely boat," Adam says, the moment past, the urge to scream gone, as if it had never been. "I don't think I've ever ridden in a gondola before."

The boatman glances down the length of his boat with a fond smile, blue eyes looking over the scrolled wood and the intricate carvings. He nods, pushing off the empty dock.

"I guess it kind of _does_ look like a gondola, doesn't it?" he says with a peculiar grin. "I don't think anyone has ever described it that way before." The man chuckles, giving the dock one last, hard push with the oar, setting the boat floating across the water. He turns back to Adam and raises a brow. "So, do you have a coin for me?"

"Oh, yes," Adam says. "Yes, I do." He's confident he has what the boatman wants, but he's confused by his request. He didn't think anyone spoke like that anymore. A coin? He must mean a ticket. Did Adam buy one? He doesn't remember buying one. Well, maybe a ten will cover it. Adam pats down his pockets, checking inside his jacket, even smoothing down his shirt, which has no pockets at all. "Where's my wallet?"

"That's okay," the boatman says, taking an easy step over to him – impressive in a moving boat. "Do you want to see a magic trick?"

Adam stops searching his body and chuckles.

"Um…okay," he says. "Sure. Why not?"

The boatman shows Adam both of his hands, front and back, with nothing in them. He inches closer, putting his right hand almost in Adam's face, making Adam want to lean back to get away. The man stops and in front of Adam's lips, and closes his fist in front of his mouth. He looks in Adam's eyes and counts. "One…two…three." He pulls his fist away and opens it. He holds his hand out flat and there, sitting in his palm, is a gold coin.

Adam stares at it, amazed. "How…how did you do that?"

"A magician never reveals his secrets," the man says with a wink, twiddling the coin back and forth between his fingers. "But the truth is, I couldn't have found it if you didn't have it with you." The man twiddles the coin from one end of his hand to the pinkie, back to his thumb, and then the coin disappears. He nonchalantly returns to the bow and doesn't say anything more about it. "So, is this your first time on our shores?"

"As far as I know," Adam replies. "Do people often return?" Something about the boatman's question bothers him. This seems like a serene place, a haven, but there's something ominous about it, and Adam feels like people don't often come back here when they leave. Or that they shouldn't.

"Oh, yeah," the boatman says, digging his oar deep into the water to speed them along. "Some people come back loads of times. Some people never come back."

Adam nods. "It sure is a beautiful day to be out on the water."

"You think so?" the boatman asks. It sounds like the kind of thoughtless filler question people normally ask when making small talk, but the man turns and looks at Adam, waiting for an answer.

"Yes, of course," Adam says, unnerved. "I mean, the sun is shining, the birds are out, and the people are…" Adam turns his head to look behind him, finally getting a view of the shore across the way. It looks about as packed as the shore he came from. He squints at the beach, at the people laughing and running and playing in the sand. The sky above them is blue, and there isn't a cloud that he can see. Except, every once in a while, he thinks he sees…no, it has to be a mistake. It's not nighttime, it's not raining. It's a calm summer day.

 _A flash of red. A siren. A scream._

Someone on the shore looks his way and points, their finger skeletal, their face bloody, their lower jaw missing. But if there's a period of time equal to 1/1000th of a second, then that's all it lasts before the person is healthy and whole, racing through the sand, laughing and playing again.

"You were saying," the man says, seated on the bench in front of him, his oar resting across his lap and the boat moving entirely on its own.

"I…" Adam shakes his head. Something's not right. No – nothing's right. Not a single thing. Where is he? Why is he on this lake? He was driving into the city. That's where he was before this. He was going into the city to see…

"Kurt?" Adam says.

The man leans in closer, his blue eyes examining Adam's face, and Adam examines his back, especially his eyes. There are moments, split seconds, when Adam thinks they're something else – blank, gaping holes in a face like white stone. But they're just eyes – human eyes, brilliantly blue. "Are you…Kurt?"

The boatman smiles.

Kurt. Yes, Kurt. Adam was going in to the city to see Kurt. Kurt had called Adam after six months of not seeing one another, not speaking. Kurt was marrying someone else. Adam had never met the man, but Kurt had spoken about him – frequently. And as much as it hurt Adam to do it, he stepped aside, broke all ties. He didn't want Kurt to be confused by his feelings, or feel guilty for giving him the brush off. Adam thought Kurt would be happy. But he wasn't happy. He was miserable, and Adam never knew because he stopped being around. He wasn't there to help when everything went sour.

But out of the blue, Kurt called, and Adam was so over the moon about seeing him, he couldn't wait until the next day when he returned to Manhattan. He borrowed a friend's car, but it was a stick, and Adam only drives manual. It was the middle of the night, and it started raining. He was crossing the bridge into the city when…

"I _am_ Kurt," the man says solemnly, "but only for a little while longer."

"What?" Adam asks, snapping out of his memory before the flash of red. "Why?"

"Try to remember why," the man that Adam swears is Kurt says, standing with his oar and going back to the front of the boat.

Adam thinks on it, thinks long and hard, but something about the smooth movement of the boat on the water, and the sunlight reflecting back up into his eyes, is slowly zapping his memory.

Something flashed red.

A light.

The brake lights from the cars in front of him.

There was a siren.

An emergency vehicle had already stopped to help the victims of a previous accident. Other cars, speeding in the rain, skidded out trying to avoid it, crashing one after another, forming a mass, pushing it closer and closer to the edge.

A scream.

No, several screams all at once. It just sounded like one scream when the huddle of cars turned into a pile, cars hitting it and flying over, breaking through the lines and falling off the bridge.

Off the bridge and into the water.

"Well, here you go," the boatman says, pulling to a shore with no dock. The boat stops, seemingly on its own, and stays right where it is without listing or bobbing. Adam looks from the shore, to the boat, to the man with the oar.

"Thank you," Adam says. "For the ride, I mean."

"You got what you paid for," the man says with a wink.

"Yeah," Adam says. "I guess I did."

Adam looks at the man's face. His face – it looks so much like Kurt's, it's unsettling. But it's not Kurt. Adam knows it's not Kurt. He can feel it, like an itch he can't reach. Adam steps off the boat, not paying attention to his footing, and trips. He reaches out to break his fall and grabs hold of the stern of the boat, his gaze dropping down to the water.

But it's not completely water anymore.

"Jesus Christ!" he gasps.

Pale hands hold the boat steady, each pair greying, some waterlogged, others desiccated, in different states of decay - all but one pair, holding on tight to the rim of the boat, dripping blood into the murky water. There is something familiar about those hands - the plain silver band on the left index finger, the mole on the right wrist, the watch with the shattered face. Adam crouches down to take a closer look. Then he holds his hands up in front of his face and takes a look.

"Those…those are _my_ hands," Adam says, afraid to get a better look. "And I…" Adam's eyes sweep the beach. It's not a beach any longer, but an endless expanse of brownish-red rock. The people laughing and running and playing aren't there anymore. They've been replaced by a crowd of zombie-looking creatures milling about, aimless, depressed, heads bowed, spines curved. The blue sky has gone dark, and the water, a dismal reflection of it.

"Am I…am I dead?"

Adam is afraid to look up at the boatman when he asks – the man with Kurt's face. Kurt is all Adam has left to hold on to. He doesn't want that to change. If he looks up and Kurt is gone, even if it wasn't Kurt to begin with, his mind might split in two. But he knows he has to look up. He can't stay on the boat any longer.

He's beginning to attract attention.

When he looks up at the boatman – when he looks up at Kurt - he sees not the man in the tailored designer suit with the electric blue eyes, but a horrible hole-eyed creature, without an inch of skin on his face, his body and arms covered by a long, black hood, singed in places, covered in soot, greying and ashen like everything else around them.

"Yes," the specter says in Kurt's voice before that is lost completely. "Yes, you are."

Adam backs off the boat, on to the rock. It's hard beneath his shoes, digging into his feet through the soles.

"Then…then why the illusion?" he asks, still walking backward. "Was that you doing that? To be cruel? Like you were to those other people on the shore?"

"No." the specter says. "That was you. Your brain's way of trying to protect you. But it can't deny where you are anymore. Your brain is finally catching up with you. You're seeing things the way they are."

Adam nods, though he doesn't know why. He still doesn't understand.

"So, am I…in hell?"

"No," the boatman says. "You're not. But you're not in heaven, either. You're just kind of…waiting."

Adam keeps nodding, hoping that if he does, it will be easier to accept, but it's not. Everything he knew, everything he was led to believe is gone. It meant nothing – not if he ended up here in this depressing place…alone.

"Is there," Adam says, holding his arms out in desperation, "is there anything I can do?"

Adam doesn't know what he expects as an answer. He's not even sure what he's asking. Can he return to earth? No, he's dead. He died in his car, beneath about thirty other cars, and the bottom of the water. Is there anywhere else he can go but here? Not likely, if this is where the boatman took him. But he said other people travel back and forth lots. There has to be something for him other than this. This can't be the end.

The boatman tilts his head beneath his hood, watching Adam curiously. He puts down his oar and steps off the boat, his feet _clack-clack-clacking_ on the rocky shore, until he's within a foot of Adam, and everything changes again. They're not on the rocky shore, but in Central Park, in the fall, and it's midday. Adam can tell by the quality of light, and the shadows stretching across the grass. He's looking at Kurt again, a red wool scarf that his stepmother made him for Christmas wrapped around his neck, and dressed in that black peacoat he always favored.

"Keep this," the boatman says quickly. He pulls the gold coin from his pocket and puts it back in Adam's mouth. Adam opens his mouth to object, but the boatman is swift. The second the cold metal touches his tongue, it disappears. Then the boatman kisses him. It's not a long kiss, and it's not warm. It's not like Kurt at all, but it's all Adam will get for now. "Keep it hidden," the boatman says, running a thumb along Adam's lips, sealing them shut. "You might decide that you have need to come across my river again sometime."

As soon as the boatman turns, the illusion of Central Park, of fall, and of Kurt melt away, and Adam's standing on the shore, the red rock digging in to his feet, as the boat drifts away across the water.


End file.
